How about '77? That's when I started. I still have my original K&R (ratty though it is). Worked up from RPGII to COBOL and eventually C. Learned things by reading code as there was precious little in book stores and libraries. When I discovered Unix I was hooked. Eventually wrote and maintained a 4*1/2 gen language comprising 1 million lines of K&R C. That was intriguing. AUD$6m on ASX. in '86. I had to write what is now called a garbage collector. I got sick of debugging and wrote a test system in '87. It was insane, but understandable. Once stood on a stage at UnixWorld and said: "When demonstrating systems, never say anything more predictive than: 'Watch this'" And hit return. The code core dumped. It actually crashed, but everybody in the theatre thought it was a stunt and laughed uproariously. I smiled and re-typed the command. This time it worked. And the demo went on. Studied the Dragon Book and others and dug deep (way too deep) into the electrics of IP. And I do mean electrics - CRO and all. Figured how fast electricity travels in a circuit to time latches to build my own boards. The thing was... I felt obsessed. I had to learn. And there where no books. Reading code was like Neo: "I know kung fu!" You had to read code. And assembly. After getting the TCP/IP Illustrated books I dug deep into protocols. Contributed to RFC 2812. It was fun!!! I had found my muse. Spending hours studying hex dumps of network interactions to find timing issues over copper. Writing manuals using the AN macros (Hint. nroff -man). Writing a sysadmin manual in the 80's. Contributed to a game named XBattle. And then... I learned C++ and Perl and Ruby and... and... And then... I got old. I found that "rush, rush, hurry up and wait" started. I contributed to the Agile movement. I worked at a company just 5 years ago that "embraced" Agile. And they got everything completely and utterly wrong. And pushed, and pushed until one day my Scrum Master clicked her fingers at me and whistled and waved me over to a standup. I told her I wasn't a dog. She said "What are you going to do? You're 60! Are you going to quit?" I did. It used to be fun. It used to be enriching. It was wonderful to be able to figure out how to transfer data over UUCP and help build the 'Net. To contribute to the bazaar. To contribute. To increase understanding. To increase the wealth of knowledge for future programmers. And now... Well I'm past it now. I'm 66. I still configure our home network. I still write code. Home automation is a joy. Garden automation is a joy. Corporate IT? Not for me.